Seeking Depth in Mediocrity
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
This may come across as conceited.
That’s OK. Because I need the cathartic kick of putting this out in the sun, metaphorically.
I’ve been experiencing dissatisfaction and disconnection in my work. Not the work itself, per se, but in the context of the work. I still enjoy what I do. But it’s like it’s somehow been tainted with an existential undertone of frustration and disappointment and disconnection. It sucks. And yet, it’s not entirely unfamiliar. Like a disagreeable deja vu. Almost more than the vertiginousness (You don’t have to look that up; it just means I feel off-balance.) is the icky familiarity of the feeling. Like a bad smell you know you’ve smelled before but cannot place.
And then I had an epiphany.
Like most realisations, it didn’t come while I was actively seeking an answer, but rather from the side, only briefly glimpsed out of the corner of my eye before: BAM! In one of those stream of consciousness conversations where you start out talking about grapefruit (Clearly, the most superior of all citrus fruits.) and somehow end up discussing the humanity of Frankenstein's monster, I made an offhand comment: “It’s like when I was in high school and writing my senior English paper on the extended metaphor of the ear in Shakespeare's Hamlet.”
Which led to a little silence and then the reply, “Really?”
To which I replied, perhaps more enthusiastically than necessary, “Yes! Did you ever notice how every major betrayal in Hamlet begins with someone listening, not seeing. Surveillance, manipulation, truth. It’s all auditory. The poison is literally poured in the ear! Isn’t that crazy?”
“No. Not crazy. Kind of brilliant. I never gave it much thought.”
“No one does. Didn’t back then either. I was writing about that extended ear metaphor that taps into everything—deceit, perception, memory, infection, even epistemology—and my peers were writing about…are hotdogs sandwiches?”
Oh.
My.
God.
High school.
I didn’t particularly dislike high school. Of the unpleasant things I have had to endure in my life, high school is near the bottom of the list. I did, however, unambiguously dislike most high schoolers. Not for the usual reasons. I wasn’t bullied. No one was exceptionally mean (beyond the general, petty meanness of being a teenager) to me. I never felt excluded or ostracised. I was not socially awkward. And I was as popular as I wanted to be. But my peers were…kind of dumb.
Some were, understandably, tabula rasa dumb. Just kind of empty. If I am being generous, they were almost zen-like. But without the spiritual kick. And certainly no enlightenment forthcoming.
Some were endearingly dumb, like the girl who wore a fake fur coat to school and when I remarked with mock horror about how many rabbits it takes to make a fur coat she responded with, “It’s simulated.” And I was compelled to reply—I mean I really had to—that that was horrible, even more egregious! Was she not aware of how small simulates are and that it takes at least five times as many simulates than rabbits to make a fashion statement? I didn’t make her cry—I’m no monster—but I did make her think, which might have been more cruel.
Most were just embarrassingly and wearisomely dumb though.
And the benchmarks and goals set were a match for all of that. It often left me feeling frustrated. And disappointed. And disconnected.
“Hell is other people.”
~Jean-Paul Sartre
Yeah, that.
I’m back in high school.
Not literally, of course. No lockers or promposals. But emotionally? Existentially? That same disconnect is back, just wearing office-casual and holding a latte. I’m not saying my peers are dim; some of them are smart, thoughtful, hard working people. But the broader culture? Let’s just say there are also a few too many folks who justify writing newspapers at a middle-school level. And mediocrity, like most things in corporate life, flows from the top—set by leaders chasing metrics over meaning.
If you’re the kind of person who stays up at night wondering whether Gertrude knows what she’s done, it’s hard not to feel slightly out of sync with people whose main concern is bagels. (Which, fine. Bagels are delicious.) I’m once again the kid writing about the psychological architecture of Paradise Lost and how the characters are symbolic representations of the human psyche (spoiler: Satan is basically the id in a cape), while others churn out hot takes, like insisting ‘In the Air Tonight’ is definitely about Phil Collins watching a guy drown (spoiler: it’s definitely not).
~Me
This isn’t just dissatisfaction with my job. It’s frustration with a culture of lowered standards and the celebration of those who meet them. I don’t think it makes me a perfectionist because I don’t believe that acceptable, adequate, tolerable, and passable should be de rigueur. And that’s what things have become. Lowering standards does not make things accessible to everyone, it cheapens the quality and value of both the process and the outcome. There’s nothing wrong with feeling a deep, disorienting alienation of being someone who strives for excellence in a world that increasingly rewards surface-level takes and glitter-dusted mediocrity. There is something wrong with lowering yourself to that level.
Another thought that came with that realization: I’m not alone. Not really. Just like in high school, it’s easy to feel like what you see when you look up from your desk is all there is. But this is only a part of the picture—a noisy, blurry part. I still have meaning, richness, and joy in the other corners of my life.
I still want meaning in my work. Depth. Complexity. I want to know what things are for, not just how to optimize them. And I’m not sorry for that. And maybe, just maybe, I’ve outgrown the table I’m sitting at. Maybe it’s time to build my own. But now that I’ve named the problem, I don’t have to keep swallowing it like it’s mine to fix. I can set it down. I can stop apologizing for wanting depth.
And if that makes me the Hamlet kid again—so be it. I’ll be over here, listening.
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